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Yoojin often wondered at the depth of the kinds of dreams he had. There were no classes assigned to things as mundane as dreams, but it could somehow be classified anyway. His nightmares were stronger than C-class but weaker than S. Some nights it boiled over and pierce even through that class, too, and he’d receive another reminder that even the wishing stone couldn't clean his bloody hands.
But even when he had his S-class fear resistance, his dreams were still made of the same stuff. It’s just that it wasn’t fear governing this realm, it was the quiet, cold guilt of a corpse in his arms under a white tree. Even if Yoojin had some kind of resistance against guilt, these dreams would be stronger than that. Beyond L-class.
His beloved younger brother who needed him for everything in this world… who needed him to protect and love him. For five years, he let his only family rot and die for his own ugly sins when Yoohyun would never think to do such a thing to him. Yoojin would never forgive himself.
These dreams of drifting snow and frozen flesh would haunt Yoojin for the rest of his life.
He laid with Yoohyun, gazing up at the white branches that stretched endlessly like white fractures in the perfect blackness. Trying to make his frozen hand warm again.
“This place is more pathetic than I thought.”
Yoojin looked to his left, eyes wide. This place was always soundless in an almost sacred way, but someone else’s mocking voice broke the silence.
Hyunjae glided down, looking the same as he had in Switzerland. Dressed simply in a white shirt and dark, rolled up slacks and barefoot. Ripples radiated from his landing. Those golden eyes cast around, somewhat intrigued by the setting but ultimately settled upon Yoojin lying on the ground. “For a creature with so much forbidden knowledge about the origin of the world, your mind is quite the bland place.”
Yoojin stared at him, trying to make sense of this apparition. He sat up. “I thought I absorbed you into my stones.”
“I’m still here until the magic stones completely assimilate me.” He smiled faintly.
“What version of that bastard are you anyway?”
“My pre-regression identity merged with the me who met you in Switzerland.”
“What the hell? I thought you were too picky to merge properly. What was all that trouble for if you could just slap yourself together now?”
He laughed. “I’m imperfectly made. I’m nothing but an unstable lump of memories in the shape of a man, so I can’t do anything but wander around this barren mindscape of yours.”
Yoojin got up to shield his brother’s body from Hyunjae’s prying eyes. “Why don’t you go back to where I put you and stay out of this place?”
Hyunjae’s eyes lifted from Yoohyun and met Yoojin’s. A smile that was neither mockingly innocent nor predatorially sharp. It was sincere in a way that Yoojin distrusted. “Take a trip with me.”
“Hah?”
He closed his eyes with a chuckle. “We could go to Switzerland like last time. Or we could go someplace else in mine or your memories if you’d prefer, but Switzerland was the best preserved in my memory.”
Yoojin glared at him. “I’m not leaving him.”
He glanced at the corpse and made that innocuous smile that almost certainly meant he was mocking Yoojin. “We could take it with us.”
“Don’t call him an it.”
“That corpse is just a figment of your dream.”
And it was all Yoojin had.
He swiped at Hyunjae’s image, turning the sight of him into ghostly ribbons to be blown back to where he was placed.
Sometimes Yoojin held him and spoke wordlessly into the void. His mouth moved as he recalled different memories of their childhood, but his vocal chords remained mute. Yoohyun was still asleep in his arms.
The worst part of it was that Yoohyun looked exhausted even in death. He had bags under his eyes, scrapes and cuts and scars on his body. A life spent painfully. A life spent alone.
Yoojin held him close, chest convulsing.
When they were children, Yoohyun followed him everywhere to do everything that Yoojin was doing. It was like he didn’t have a single thought that strayed more than ten feet from his big brother. All he ever wanted was to cling to his sleeve and ask Yoojin what he was doing. He was a good child that did everything Yoojin asked except for going to school when he bidded him. It made Yoohyun and Yoojin tardy for nearly every class in elementary school. No matter how much Yoojin scolded him or begged him, Yoohyun was adamant on following Yoojin to his class.
If there was one thing that Yoohyun hated, it was to be left alone.
Yoojin’s fingers clutched uselessly at Yoohyun’s jacket. His teachers ignored him. His peers avoided him. His own parents wouldn’t hold him. Yoojin was the only one that could’ve saved him from an inescapable lifetime of loneliness.
His little brother’s name couldn’t even leave his lips. Stillborn in his throat.
A flutter of red.
There was Hyunjae standing some distance away, wearing his Sillekia coat and hair styled back. His back was to them as he gazed at the Tree of Snowfall, heedless of Yoojin and Yoohyun.
Yoojin stared with fierce protectiveness at the distant figure, breath heaving as he clutched Yoohyun close.
He remained just where he was, and his own lips were moving, too. Making his own kind of prayer in the silence.
Yoojin closed his eyes and curled around his brother.
“Didn’t I tell you not to come in here?” Yoojin didn’t want to see this bastard’s face every night.
Hyunjae smiled. “You did, but you make quite a racket in here. I live next to your heart, so I can’t help but feel the tremors.”
“I don’t care. Don’t come in here.”
“You know, I’m still alive in a way. I might just be a bundle of memories, but I still have things that I want.”
Yoojin’s brows furrowed. “What could you possibly want?”
“I want to spend my remaining time with some interesting company. I have a little less than a month before I’m subsumed.” He crossed his arms and leaned on nothing, but it was somehow still infuriatingly graceful. “You’ll have years and years to drown yourself here. Can’t you spare me a night or two?”
He sighed. “Can’t you go amuse yourself elsewhere? Go to Switzerland by yourself. Dream up a past lover and have fun.”
“How cruel,” he whimpered with bullshit tears even though he was a forty-two-goddamn-year-old man. “This is your domain. I have no imaginative powers here. Even if I did, nothing quite compares to the real thing.”
“What the hell,” Yoojin muttered, chills crawling up his spine. “You were just going to imagine me?”
He shrugged with a smile. “No one matches how interesting you are. Even this macabre nightly ritual of yours has its own intrigue.”
“Fuck off. I told you that you’re not allowed in this place, so don’t mock it as you please.”
“If you really don’t like it, then you have the power to pull me apart early.” His smile slipped as he took on an analytical look, framing one side of his face with a pondering hand. “Break me down into dust and sweep me back into the magic cores. Who knows? Maybe it’ll speed up the incubation if you make me easier to digest.”
Yoojin stared at him, somewhat at a loss.
“Why hesitate? Did you still want to pull information out of me? You could encode it separately into your own memories before melting me down.” Hyunjae grinned, somehow intellectually excited by the mechanics of his final death. “You could even look into my childhood or look around for some of my weaknesses. But I’ll warn you now that it won’t be very useful as blackmail material for the real me.”
He turned away from this crazy bastard. “Just leave. I’m not going to do that.”
“Why not? I’d rather be pulled apart now than have to listen to this every night.”
“Are you just going to get more annoying until I kill you?”
“Or until you go to Italy with me.” That inconspicuous yet mocking smile. “Why hesitate? You’ve killed people before, and I’m significantly less alive than them. I’m not even a full human being.”
“You’re so noisy,” Yoojin snapped. He didn’t know that accepting the fractured mana of such an annoying guy would come with such heavy responsibilities. “If I come with you once, then you have to leave me the hell alone after.”
“Oh, my. What generosity.”
“We’re taking Yoohyun with us.”
“Of course.”
Yoojin drew from a thread inside Hyunjae’s memories, and the familiar sprawling hills of alpine greenery and the incredible depth of glacial valleys unfurled around them. “So, you had taken a liking to Switzerland.”
“It’s the only place I’ve seen outside of Korea besides the time I got human trafficked into Hong Kong.”
“You have a month to see nearly everywhere else through my memories.”
“I told you, one night.”
“That significantly compresses the travel itinerary.”
“That’s not my job, shitty tour guide.”
Hyunjae chuckled. “You’re right, dear guest.”
Yoojin sat next to Yoohyun and laid his head to rest in his lap.
Hyunjae sat beside him and regarded him for a moment. “What’s the point of that?”
He bared his teeth. “Don’t call him an object.”
“I’m not referring to the young master. I’m talking about the way you hold him every night, torturing yourself.”
“I’m not answering questions like that. Why the hell do you want to know anyway?”
Hyunjae just smiled and enjoyed the cold breeze ruffling his hair like a field of golden wheat. “It’s my last day alive. I figured I might as well indulge an interesting question. I’m just a fragment of a human anyway. What’s the harm in venting to me again? This is probably your only chance to get some relief from your festering emotions.”
Yoojin bristled. “I don’t want relief.”
“Why not?”
He stared out at the valley, captured in immeasurable detail. It felt… altered. Like a picture rearranged for the optimal look. But it didn’t feel wrong, per say. He realized that this was how Hyunjae remembered this space. Beauty was written into every fiber, but it fell on blind eyes. “How am I supposed to get relief after what I’d done?”
“What did you do?”
Yoojin was sent right back to the moment of the worst mistake of his life. His most treasured bond, shattered by his own pride, and his own brother cast into the deepest, most unfathomably desolate margin of existence. Forever. He didn’t bother to hide his ruined expression. “I left him alone.”
“Why is that so bad?”
“Because he’s my only brother!” His voice was revealing everything. His heart was bursting with the overflow of what was kept locked inside. “He was depending on me! I was responsible for him ever since he was born, so how could I—? How could I have ever turned away from him…?”
“Wasn’t it because he kept pissing you off and pushing you away?”
“No!”
“I can feel your memories inside you even from here. I can glean that much.”
Yoojin grabbed him by the collar and closed a fist around the essence of his being, fragile and fractured like glass. “Don’t root around in there. Don’t pretend to know me or Yoohyun.”
Hyunjae looked up at him, expression grave. “I’m not pretending to do anything. I’m just not going to help you with this.”
“With what?”
“It had been rather insightful to watch you wallow in your own guilt the first few times, but I don’t find it fun to help your self-harm addiction. This is just how I’m looking at it all.” His solemn face snapped back into that dumb, chipper smile. “If you don’t wanna hear it, just kill me!”
Yoojin flung him away, and in the space of his mind, he actually did manage to send him tumbling across the grass. “You bastard, why are you so unbearable even in here?!”
Hyunjae picked himself up with a laugh as he brushed himself off and returned to effortless perfection. “I’m just voicing an opinion which I think is a quite reasonable. Your brother also did his part to isolate himself. The young master is one of the most willful and cunning people I’ve met. It’s not as if he’s a child that doesn’t know any better. He’s a grown man who made his own choices.”
His chest constricted. “I know that already. I know that Yoohyun played a part in it himself, but I can’t possibly forget about mine. When I regressed back to the start, all I had to do was reach for Yoohyun and hug him, and that was all that was needed to fix everything. If I’d just put away my silly pride for just a moment to hug my own brother and tell him that I loved him, he didn’t have to face a fate like this.” The space around them withered, eaten by the purest white fracturing the picturesque landscape. Yoojin tightened the hand on Yoohyun’s cheek. “If I’d done that even once in the five years we had….”
Hyunjae grinned maliciously. “And that’s the wicked truth of it all. This is your fault, too. You played a part, and there’s nothing you can do to reverse it, wishing stone or no. Now, you have a knife in your stomach that you get to twist for eternity and damnation as long as you never let go of the handle.”
Yoojin swallowed dryly as the tree of snowfall broke in upon them, disintegrating the loamy dirt beneath them into dust.
“Was that good? Is that what you wanted from me? I tried my best to imitate you, but it’s difficult to get into your head.”
“Enough with the shitty puns. Leave.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll go back to the stones and await my execution there. But I’ll leave my last words.” He got up and turned with an annoying smile.
“I don’t want them!”
“Yoojin. The deeper you make the wound, the easier it is for your enemies to take advantage of it to hurt you. Jellyfish had already done that to you. Whether or not you think you’ve had enough suffering, you’re opening a vulnerability that someone will get their hands on.” He was going up into smoke. “I’m so curious as to whether this will be your fatal flaw. It’s a pity I can’t stick around to watch you get eaten alive by your own guilt.”
He was gone, leaving Yoojin at the foot of the silent origin, his sins cradled in his lap.
But the wind whistled through, cold and dewy.
Yoojin didn’t wanna goddamn hear it. That was why he’d put up a wall around his mind, so Hyunjae couldn’t crawl in and spout bullshit again. But he could hear the idiot pawing at the door like a cat wanting inside.
He wasn’t going to go out of his way to be unnecessarily cruel even to an irritating bastard like him. He didn’t want to unravel him when it was clear that Hyunjae still had wishes despite how much he seemed to enjoy baiting Yoojin into killing him.
He was still waiting outside the wall for two nights, using up his remaining time to scratch at his wall like some puppy left out in the rain. But Yoojin didn’t doubt for one second that he wasn’t going to glide in like the most smug asshole on earth.
“I told you to go back to the pit where I shoved you,” Yoojin groused, sitting next to Yoohyun. “Stop sitting outside my door!”
“You know what you need to do to get rid of me,” he cheerfully reminded as he took a seat next to him again.
“Damn it.” Yoojin let out a loud sigh. “I didn’t even do anything for the last two nights. What do you possibly have to complain about, you lousy tenant?”
“Mr. Landlord, this humble tenant that doesn’t pay rent wishes for interesting company.”
“You brat, why are you so demanding? You’re enough trouble in real life!” Yoojin barked. “Just yesterday you called me your princess in front of the entire Association! Do you have any idea what the press is saying?”
Hyunjae laughed. “How can you get mad at me when I didn’t do anything?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re always coming up with reasons for me to get angry.” He kicked him. “I’ll give you two hours every night. Leave me alone for the rest of the time.”
He inclined his head with a smile. “Thank you kindly for your hospitality, Mr. Landlord.”
“Mr. Landlord, I couldn’t trouble you for a decanter of grand centurion red, could I?” He was swirling a glass of the other wine that Yoojin had summoned for him and leaning over a plate of rare filet mignon made out of dragon meat. He looked like the jobless rich trust fund brat he was acting like.
“I don’t even know what a decanter is.” Yoojin conjured up a weird-looking bottle full of it based on Hyunjae’s memories.
“Thank you, sir.” He was all smiles, a light flush of intoxication finally coloring his cheeks as the second bottle got to him. It was probably his first chance to get drunk since he awakened. He poured some out for him, Yoojin, and Yoohyun.
“Why are you pouring him a glass?” Yoojin poofed away the glass and adjusted Yoohyun on his lap. They were sitting on a chaise, so Yoohyun could lay down on his leg. “Don’t just play tea party with him as you please.”
“My apologies.” He swirled the wine, sniffed it like the pretentious asshole he was, and took a sip. “But Mr. Landlord, must you always bring your dead brother with you to our dates?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, my.” He made a scandalously sultry smile as he opened just one eye to glance up through thick blonde lashes at him. “Have I just been your plaything all this time?”
“Who’s the plaything here?” That Hyunjae had been insufferably demanding every night, and Yoojin was unsettled to find himself on the other end of their dynamic. In reality, he shamelessly milked Hyunjae for cash and supplies while jabbing him with insults as he pleased, but by night he was worked to the bone as a magic lamp.
“If you’re so sick of it, then just give me a tug, and I’ll be gone.” He had a bite of dragon steak dripping with rich, glittering sauce probably made out of griffon blood or something.
“Stop talking about that already.”
“Oh? You’ll spare me?”
“I never intended to kill you since the beginning,” Yoojin snipped. “So, stop joking about it.”
Hyunjae hummed, still observing him over his glass of rich-man wine. “Your sense of guilt is incredibly strong. This would’ve been rather useful to know if I still had a body.”
Yoojin pursed his lips. “Just eat your food and drink yourself stupid, alright? Don’t go digging around in my emotions like that.”
“But this emotion is about me. Can’t I take a peek in your head?”
“That’s the same pun twice.”
“I didn’t expect you to feel guilty about someone who tried to drown you. You didn’t even meet the past me before that point. Why are you guilty about taking my mana?”
He stared at the window beside him offering a view of the Seoul cityscape blinking up at them in dark splendour. It looked like a smattering of stars from here, but they were just pinpricks of lights, easily within reach of his fist. Even this room was completely empty with only their table in the velvety, dim center. It was the memory of a predator presiding over his domain. Every night, Yoojin kept fabricating every little memory that Hyunjae requested. It was difficult to call him a stranger by this point.
And this not-stranger who kept him company every night… could have lived if Yoojin hadn’t forcibly suppressed him. It was necessary to break him apart because he couldn’t merge properly with the other Hyunjae, but that didn’t erase the fact that pre-regression Hyunjae was a human being, too. “Why do you care how I feel about it? I’m taking your mana all the same.”
“If you could, would you let me free? Let me have another chance to live?”
The question was chilling. His stomach twisted, and he asked, “Do… you want to?”
Hyunjae tipped his head back and laugh, tipsy on that expensive wine. “How strong can your guilt be? It’s impossible even if I wanted to. My time is numbered. I’m so fractured that I couldn’t possibly possess a body anymore. The only place in the world I can still exist is inside your heart.”
“ Next to my heart.”
“Yes. Wrapped right around it.” He cut into his steak, black dragon’s blood oozing out of it. “So, stop buzzing guilt all the time. It keeps me up at night.”
“You can feel it?”
“Yes. I’m flattered, but I’d rather you didn’t. I’m having more fun in here than I was stuffed into the recesses of my own subconscious.”
“You—the what?” Yoojin frowned. “Wait, where were you before you possessed Hyunjae?”
“I’m not sure. I had a very limited sense of consciousness. I only really stirred when the present Hyunjae came into contact with me. When he dug deep enough to find me, I seized his body.” He gingerly wiped his mouth despite having eaten half his steak without a drop falling out of place. “It was a long time being asleep, so I find this more amusing than that.”
Yoojin considered his words as he had a sip of the wine. It tasted like blood. He spat it out. “Agh, why—this is a cup of blood!”
“It’s made with fermented S-class dungeon flora. It’s an acquired taste, but I heard it’s meant to taste sweet.” He grinned with another sip. “Interesting. Do you experience my sensory memories exactly?”
“I think I do.”
“What do you sense?”
“I see a spoiled giggolo on his third bottle of wine.”
Hyunjae chuckled and purred with that playboy smile dripping with obnoxious charisma, “Mr. Landlord, could I trouble you for a split of Scyllan prosecco? The one I had in Bordeaux.”
“Hyung,” Yoohyun said one day as they were eating breakfast with Yerim. Hyunjae was also here for some reason, but Yoojin only offered him an apple.
“Yes?” Yoojin tapped through some files that Hyunjae sent over about the latest suspicious movements of a burgeoning Filial Piety contractee group.
“You’re sleeping better these days.” He rubbed the area under his eyes.
“W-what? I’m sleeping as well as I usually do. Of course!” Yoojin patted him on the back good-naturedly and reached over to ruffle Yerim’s hair. “You, too, you should rest well even if you’re S-class, okay?”
Yerim nodded along distractedly as she shoveled in more of the fried eggs. She put down the bowl with a gulp and turned to Hyunjae who had broken the apple in half and was dignifiedly nibbling on one half. “Blonde ahjussi! You’re good at cooking for a rich man.”
“Yerim, do you want more? You do; you’re a growing kid.” Yoojin asked as he had a big, taunting bite of his delicious breakfast in front of Hyunjae. “Work for your keep and make her seconds, shitty tenant.”
“Tenant?” Hyunjae asked with a polite smile.
“Uh…” Yoojin busied himself with swallowing food to stall for time. “Nevermind.”
“I see present me is also getting punished for things he didn’t do,” Hyunjae mocked as he strolled right into Yoojin’s mind as he goddamn pleased.
“How the hell do you know about that?” Yoojin whirled to face him like he was caught red-handed.
He shrugged. “I have more free rein in your weaker F-class body.”
“Don't make this F-class throttle you, you mere S-class.”
A grin lit his face. “I think I’m understanding more how I’ve gotten so charmed by you.”
“You’re charmed because you’re a weird freak.”
Hyunjae looked around at his mindscape at the foot of the origin tree and the body in his arms. “But between you and I, you may have the more intriguing mind.”
Hyunjae’s mind used a stone pavilion bathed in golden sunlight as a backdrop, the carefree bastard. “Well, what do you want tonight? White beaches of the Carribean? Snowy peaks of the Himilayas?”
“Why don’t we have a pick from your memories? I’m rather bored with all of mine.”
Yoojin could smack this rich brat. Then, he remembered that he could and did so. “Where do you think I could even take you?”
He hummed as he fixed his hair. “One of the dungeons you almost died in, perhaps? Or maybe wherever you saw the Mermaid Queen?”
He bristled. “You’re getting brazen with your requests.”
“I might as well be ambitious and become more insolent about the things I’m most curious about. I’m only gambling with my life at this point.”
Yoojin glared at him. “I told you not to joke about that anymore.”
Hyunjae smiled innocently. “My apologies.”
Then, he opened his memory of Diarma’s corpse-infested, blood swamp of a mind. “You wanted to see this before you died?”
Hyunjae took his time inspecting the place before he stood up with an amused scoff. “Impressive. I’ve never seen so terrifying a place. I wonder how you made it out of here.”
Yoojin blushed when he remembered Hyunjae could infer his experiences, and he snapped it away to put them back at the tree.
“The dungeons you entered pre-regression. Let me see them.”
“Don’t order me around as you please.”
“But Mr. Landlord, your delinquent tenant will be moving out soon. Won’t you excuse his insolence?”
This bastard knew exactly where Yoojin’s limits were but didn’t think twice about pushing them another foot. If he wanted to know so bad, then Yoojin would give him a good look. He opened one for him.
A dense, suffocatingly hot jungle with such a suffocating smell of iron that it seemed to saturate the air. Every breath was bloody. The gloom of the jungle was intense and omnipresent, so chasmous that it could seem to hide anything within. Every hair stood on end as unseen eyes dug into the skin.
At their feet, dozens of Yoojin’s companions laid in pools of their own blood.
Yoojin stood before Hyunjae with bloody, stolen swords stained with his companions’ blood. “Happy?”
Hyunjae frowned and glanced down at one of the decapitated corpses because the bastard was so curious about what life was like for an F-class subsisting on foul murder and rotten luck.
Yoojin flipped to the next one. A bitterly, vengefully cold wind threatened to cast them off the side of an infinitely tall mountain. Old blood stained the snow brown and black, and blue fingers poked out of the snow.
“Is this interesting enough for you? Or should I show you the teenage E-ranker who got cannabilized by the stronger hunters a few miles back from this spot. You wanna see that?”
“I told you I’m not interested in your self-harm rituals.”
“What did you expect to see? This is simply a walk through my life.”
Another. An endless thicket of writhing thorns wrapping around corpses until they burst, every lesion digging into the skin and lighting with poison. Walls of thorns closed in. Screaming and begging swirled somewhere in the hell of thorns.
Yoojin could hardly think with the sulphuric scent of poison and dominating smell of blood. “I can show you more pathetic things like getting beat up by loan sharks or getting kicked out of the World’s Edge building by my own brother. Oh, should I show you my parents’ funeral? That should be entertaining, right?”
“Yoojin. Let’s just go back. I was wrong.”
The screaming tapered into hard silence. Before a portrait of their parents wreathed in flowers, two orphaned children clutched each others’ hands as the oldest one held back sobs in front of his stoic younger brother. The room somehow felt colder and lonelier than the snow dungeon.
Hyunjae refused to look at what Yoojin was trying to show him. “Stop it.”
Yoojin was already high on the scent of blood and incense and spiralling even deeper as he flipped and flipped through the filthiest memories he could imagine, but his black gaze was locked on Hyunjae, daring him to escape. Wishing he would. Wishing he wouldn’t.
Hoping that Hyunjae would stay with him through every horrifying memory as the world flipped and cried out with scorching, unforgiving flame.
The gut-churning smell of blood and burnt flesh stained the air and the inside of Yoojin’s lungs like a curse. Monsters descended from evil wailed their terrors in the distance. In Yoojin’s arms, a warm body, impaled on glittering black spikes.
He was thrown right back into that visceral moment, reliving it for the hundredth time. Yoohyun’s rattling breath branding his ear. Yoojin’s pounding heart and convulsing lungs.
Hyunjae yanked him off the ground and tucked him into his chest. Yoojin couldn’t breathe, but he was struggling to get out and get to his brother, but he was powerless . He couldn’t do anything as his brother’s blood pooled under him. His hands would never be clean. Black as sin. “ Yoohyun. Yoo—Yoohyun! ”
Hyunjae held him tighter. “Close your eyes and focus on me.”
Yoojin sobbed into his chest, flailing desperately to grab Yoohyun.
“Stop it, Yoojin. Don’t cling to this memory.” He stroked the back of his head. “Let’s go back to Switzerland.”
“His blood is all over me,” he whimpered, a mangled wreck of emotions. “His last words were on my cheek.”
Hyunjae wiped the blood off his cheek, but the smooth pad of his thumb continued stroking circles into his skin. “Take me to Switzerland, Yoojin. The air is sweet and crisp like ice melt. The grass is soft and lush, and the earth is fertile, loamy, and fragrant. The wild wind is cold and swift.”
Yoojin locked onto Hyunjae’s heat and words stimulating his senses. He grabbed at the warm, living body embracing him back.
“The valley is deep and dark with pine. It’s a land so vast, it’s bigger than the sky above it. There’s someone next to you to share it with.” The heat melted away, and a cool gust crashed over them like a wave. A smile entered Hyunjae’s voice. “The sunlight plays in the rippling grass and crowns your dark hair. The soul of the valley, captured in the reflection of your hungry, inquisitive eyes.”
Hyunjae lowered them to the grass before flopping on his back, Yoojin tucked in his chest and easing his lungs back into stable rhythm. “Aren’t you a handful, dear tour guide?”
“Only cause you’re a shitty guest,” Yoojin rasped, too drained to get off him.
“My dearest apologies.” Hyunjae kept his arms around him. His hands were on his neck and hair, cradling him. His chest was rising and falling.
Yoojin laid in the warm, dark comfort of Hyunjae’s embrace, unwilling to leave this moment if he could help it.
Hyunjae was just the same. His fingers were stroking through his hair, the other hand resting on his back.
This moment felt so fragile, so fucking thin and immaterial as it slipped through Yoojin’s fingers. He hugged Hyunjae tighter, grieving one more body already.
A chuckle. “I never took you for the clingy type.”
He let out a miserable exhale, bordering on a sob. The second time was closer to the latter.
Hyunjae played with a lock of his hair. He sucked in a breath. “Yoojin, I think it’s time for you to pull me apart.”
Yoojin didn’t want to answer that.
“Yoojin.”
“Shut the hell up, you bastard.”
“I’ve been a very poor tenant that’s made quite a mess on your property. I might even lose my security deposit.”
“ Shut up. ” He wrapped his arms around Hyunjae tighter as if he could keep his fractured soul together.
Hyunjae stroked the back of Yoojin’s neck. “The tour of your mind was an absolute delight, and I would gladly rate it five stars, but I mustn’t overstay my welcome.”
“I don’t want to hear this. Why do you want to die early? You still have things you wanted to do with me!” Yoojin sat up, letting Hyunjae see this unsightly expression.
“I do.” Hyunjae admired it with a bittersweetness in his eyes. “I want much more from you than I thought I ever would from a person, but I’m too curious and I dig too deep. I’m merely a bundle of fading memories. I’m more trouble than I’m worth to keep around.”
“I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you everything you want if you just stay as long as you can. I won’t drag you into my past anymore. Just don’t leave me alone.”
Hyunjae leaned up to kiss him. Yoojin latched onto him, clumsily trying to pull him in close enough that he couldn’t escape. “Hyunjae, I’ll take you out of my heart. I don’t care about whether the monster incubates. I’ll ask Myungwoo to make something for you. You’re just data, right? It’ll be easy to store you! I’ll contact the Depraved if Myungwoo can’t do it!”
“I told you not to feel guilty, Yoojin.”
“I’m the one eating you alive! There’s a way to save you!”
Hyunjae chuckled, supremely amused. “I’ve thought about locking you away forever for my own use, but I had no idea that the feeling was mutual. Yoojin, I’m not really alive. I’m a memory, and you have such a terrible habit of dwelling on those. If I stay any longer, you’ll really be in trouble.”
He pulled Yoojin in with trembling hands and started planting soft kisses all over his face. He was afraid. What bundle of memories could be afraid of dying? “Stop spouting bullshit— ”
“If I demand even your heart from you, then what’s left for the real me?” Yoojin felt his leg disappear, and he was turning to smoke beneath him. “Don’t make me into a new knife. I don’t want to be another wound you pull open in your dreams. I was always going to die.”
“Don’t do this to me. Don’t leave me alone with myself!”
“What do you mean? You still have the spare in the living world. He might not be as good as me, but he’s a bit more durable.” He kissed him, lips more soft and adoring than Yoojin thought anyone could ever treat him after seeing the darkest fathoms of himself. “I need to leave. But don’t worry; I won’t make you do it. I think I figured out how to unravel myself.”
Yoojin could only gape at this heartless bastard. “Hyunjae!”
“Yoojin.” His thumb streaked like a falling star across his cheek, the smoke spreading across his body and leaving only the shape of his body in the grass. “Be good to yourself.”
“Don’t! Hyunjae! You shitty tenant! Your lease isn’t due yet! Stay!” Yoojin was clutching at a fleeting memory. “ Stay! ”
He sat up in bed, gasping and soaked with sweat, and Yoohyun and Yerim were around his bed. A wet towel peeled off his forehead and flopped in his lap.
“Hyung! Are you alright?” Yoohyun grabbed his face.
His eyes cast blindly about the room like he could find him sitting at the foot of his bed, taunting him about about the priceless look on his face. But all he saw was his little brother and his ward worried sick over him, a mess medicine and first aid strewn all over his room. Yerim was close to tears. “Ahjussi…!”
Yoojin put himself back together, rubbing his eyes like he was wiping the sleep out of them. “Yes?”
“Hyung, what sort of nightmare were you having? I thought you were having a seizure.” He pulled Yoojin into a tight hug, and Yerim threw herself into it, too.
Yoojin closed his eyes and leaned into his family. “It wasn’t a nightmare. I’m sorry for making you worry.”
“Then, I suppose there was no need to summon me so frantically at this hour?” The door opened, and Yoojin grimaced. “Does the princess no longer require a true love’s kiss?”
Yoojin chucked a pillow at him, and it was almost more infuriating when Hyunjae let it smack against his impenetrably cheery smile. “Yeah. You dragged your sorry ass out of bed for nothing.”
“But my dear damsel was calling for me so pitifully in her sleep. Wouldn’t you care to tell me why?”
Yoojin blushed horribly. “You must have a lot of free time, don’t you, if you come running just for that.”
“What can I do if my item cries for me?”
He scowled. “I didn’t cry for you ."
Hyunjae raised a brow.
“Everyone, please leave. I’m fine. It wasn’t even a nightmare. I was—I was just having… a bad dream.” Yoojin rubbed his face, wanting to be alone, preferably for a week, but there was no such luxury. “I’m sorry for making you worry, Yoohyun. Yerim.”
“I was worried as well,” lied the liar with his shitty lying smile.
“You came running at the scent of blackmail, asshole.” Yoojin pushed Yoohyun and Yerim out of his bed. “You two, too. Go to bed. You need to sleep instead of hovering over me.”
Yoojin promised up and down and went through all the verbal hoops of reassurance to convince these two that he was fine , and he could go to bed without a goddamn nightlight and a bedtime story. By the time he’d stuffed Yoohyun back into his bed, he came back out into the kitchen and found a random loiterer leaning against his kitchen island.
“At some point, I’m going to have to count this as squatting.” Yoojin didn’t have the energy to quarrel with this bastard. “Show’s over. Out.”
“You’re hiding something.” He grinned. “And by the looks of it, something interesting.”
He felt the usual instinct to spar with Hyunjae again, but he didn’t want to after tonight. He was exhausted, and he didn’t want to look at that stupid fucking face anymore. “Get out already, shitty tenant.”
He scoffed. “I wonder what kind of fun you’ve been having all these weeks if you’ve accidentally called me this pet name again. Not only that, but you seemed to hint that you were crying for someone else with my name.”
It was four AM. All Yoojin could feel was a gaping wound in his chest, and it only got worse looking at this bastard who would never look at him the way he had. He just looked at him, gaze as hollow as he felt, and turned to pass into his room, trusting that even Hyunjae would find an listless opponent to make for a boring fight.
The door to his bedroom closed before he could pass through it. Hyunjae was right behind him, hand practically sealing the door shut. “Get your stupid hand off my door.”
“You really think that I’d leave it alone after you make such an interesting face? You’ve been having dreams about me; I can discern that much. I’m awfully curious as to what I did in there to make you so angry with me.”
This was a new type of torment. Haunted by the fucking sight of him all the time, but there was this infuriating wall of vapid nonsense between them now when the Hyunjae had been wrapped around his heart before, acquainted with his darkest memories. That Hyunjae was gone.
If only Yoojin had made up his mind to unravel Hyunjae from the start, then he could have saved all his memories to transfer them through the teaching skill. He’d been telling himself all the time that there wasn’t a need to do that. This Hyunjae was just a passing ghost here to waste his time, that there wasn’t value in keeping the scraps of meaningless time they spent together. Neither was there value in the kinds of feelings Yoojin was starting to foster for him. He’d convinced himself that none of it mattered all because he couldn’t admit to how he felt.
What was wrong with him? How could he make the same mistake again? If there was anything at all that Yoojin should have learned, it was to love people when they were still here.
Hyunjae sighed and let his hand slip away from the door. “How boring. I suppose I’ll take my leave if—”
“No,” Yoojin blurted, riding on a random impulse.
“No?”
Yoojin rubbed his face as he contemplated whether he was really going to do this. That goddamn Hyunjae. “No. Stay.”
“For what?”
“You want to find out what’s so goddamn funny, right? Fine. I’ll cut you in on it.”
Yoojin placed Hyunjae at the kitchen island and contemplated the mess he was in. Heart-Hyunjae seemed utterly convinced that his real self could replace him, but Yoojin didn’t know how the hell he could do that when everything from the past two weeks was gone. Every goddamn piece of it, leaving Yoojin in the incredibly humiliating position of one-sided feelings for this annoying blonde bastard. He didn’t even know if Hyunjae would even be able to replicate how his other self felt. The heart-Hyunjae had seen so many things that Yoojin had only shown him because he couldn’t tell anyone. He showed that Hyunjin a completely different side of himself that was destroyed by grief, guilt, and self-loathing that carelessly showed him every agonizing detail of himself just to see if he’d stay. Yoojin never showed a shred of that to anyone in reality.
Hyunjae seemed to enjoy the obvious conflict warring across his face. “Well?”
Yoojin massaged the bridge of his nose. Could he really go through with Heart-Hyunjae’s request? “I… I’ve been harboring your pre-regression self in my heart. He’s… he was just as annoying as you in there, and he messed with me every night.”
Hyunjae raised a brow.
“I… have—” Yoojin would never forgive that bastard. What the hell was he about to do? Did it really matter to confess his true feelings right now? It probably won’t matter at all once Hyunjae laughs his way out of the door. Goddamn it. “I have f-feelings… for him.”
Both of his brows raised. Then they lowered as a shitty grin grew. “Oh?”
This was the biggest mistake of his life. “K-kidding! Kidding, w-wouldn’t that be crazy or what?”
Yoojin could just melt into the floor.
“It would be rather absurd for the younger brother of the World’s Edge guild to develop feelings for the Seseong guildmaster.” He had the most unbelievable piece of blackmail in his evil little gloved hands now, and Yoojin couldn’t believe he got played by a glorified lump of data into doing this. Hyunjae straightened and adjusted the hem of his gloves. “My dear princess, I’m quite honored to have your affection, but I’m afraid I can’t meet the depth of your noble feelings. Perhaps a more handsome prince would be fitting for you. If you could find one.”
Yoojin didn’t care about heart-Hyunjae’s delusions. He would like to kill this Hyunjae, too.
“I wonder what I should do with this amusing piece of information.” A wolf’s grin.
“Do nothing with it!”
“I’m not so sure about that.” He stroked a thumb down his jaw. “This should be worth at least five favors from you to make me forget, right?”
Heart-Hyunjae was actually right, that little bastard. The vulnerability that Yoojin allowed to fester was getting exploited by Hyunjae himself. “Your personality is the fucking worst.”
“Oh, but it must have some redemptive factor if it appealed to even you.” He smiled and closed in on him, relishing how Yoojin shrank away from him.
“Look, I-I’ll give you your combat data from your pre-regression self. It’s five years of experience, so you can have it if you just forget about this!”
Hyunjae’s eyes sparked. He grinned. “Perhaps that may be worth one favor.”
“Two. Two, you slimy, immoral bastard. ”
He flashed a delighted grin. “I suppose I could take mercy on the fair maiden’s heart.”
Yoojin growled and dumped out all the memories and sensations he stored. He should have mined harder for blackmail while he still had heart-Hyunjae.
As the transfer poured through, Hyunjae sat processing everything with a smug grin. “This house call was well worth the visit.”
“Shut the hell up.”
“I’m glad you retain your familiar charm.”
“I’m not going to let you control me with it. You’re nothing but a shitty, spoiled S-class giggolo.”
Hyunjae scoffed. “I wonder what happened in there. I’m terribly curious.”
“I killed and ate you.”
“Oh, my. The princess is quite the man-eater. I wonder if my chastity’s in danger.”
Before the last dregs of the memory could flow in, Yoojin stormed back to his room to lick his wounds and brood over what he’d lost. He was an idiot. Only an absolutely lovesick moron would go and confess to that asshole and think that he could find the man who only existed in his dreams.
Hyunjae grabbed his wrist. His golden eyes were uncharacteristically wide with shock, but he didn’t seem to quite be looking at Yoojin. “You…”
He peeked with the teaching skill and saw into his mind. A blurry vision of Yoojin in the blackest void, the white branches sprouting at his back as he protected a cold corpse with a consumate killer’s determination. Him looking at Hyunjae with the ragged look of bone-deep guilt over a shared bottle of wine.
Him, bathed in the buttery sunlight, begging him to stay with all the strength of his heart that could fit even someone like Hyunjae inside.
It was only those three memories, hastily stitched together and jammed into the corner of his mind where he kept his combat data. They were blurry and frayed because heart-Hyunjae was falling apart, but it was enough to shake up that perfect face.
“Show—” Hyunjae swallowed dryly, and his eyes refocused with new light on Yoojin’s face. “Show me what happened. I need to know.”
Yoojin blinked. He grinned. “Know what?”
“What Yoojin did I just see?” He tugged Yoojin toward him, the look in his eyes hilariously desperate. “How did I fall in love with you? How did you fall for me?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, shitty S-class. I didn’t fall for you . I fell for the other Hyunjae.” Yoojin smirked. Oh, he never wanted to let this position go. It felt incredible to watch Hyunjae clutch at his clothes, willing to do anything to get his hands on Yoojin’s new favorite trump card. “I think we already clarified everything we needed to between you and I. There’s nothing more to speak about.”
“Yoojin. Please.” He grabbed his shoulders. “I’m begging you to show me what happened.”
This was better than drugs. Yoojin smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. You see, you’re very far from my type.”
Hyunjae actually blushed . He stepped back and touched his face as he wore a disbelieving, flustered smile. “Oh, my. What a blunder I’ve made.”
“All it took was three glimpses for you to fall? I didn’t know you were such an easy man.”
That blush deepened. He let out a sigh of a man hopelessly snared. “I think I have my work cut out trying to court you.”
“Like I’d ever accept a shitty S-class like you.” Yoojin smirked and turned on his heel to go back to bed, leaving Hyunjae a puddle of embarrassment behind him. “Maybe in your dreams.”